Angry Auckland apartment owners are asking whether the council is “opportunistically” running a “money-making scheme” by overcharging scores of ratepayers hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars.

Julie and Peter Collis told the Herald last week their yearly rates bills had jumped $10,000 - from $4360 last year to $14,400 this coming year - for their two-bedroom apartment in The Landis complex in Auckland’s Viaduct district.

Since then, ratepayers have inundated the Herald with similar complaints - including residents from central Auckland’s Latitude 37 and Heritage apartment blocks and South Auckland’s Mcentral and Ramada Manukau.

Heritage resident Amanda Leoni said her apartment’s rates jumped from $3024 last year to the “outrageous” figure of $8841 this year.

Martin Wrigley from Latitude 37, meanwhile, said this is the second year in a row he’s been overcharged after his bill previously jumped from $1944 in 2021-2022 to $5308 in 2022-2023.

The big jumps are because the council is incorrectly classifying apartments as commercial properties rather than homes.

But Leoni said the council is not first asking the owners how they use the premises, and that’s led her to question its motives.

“Was this an attempted money-making scheme by the council?”

Other ratepayers said they believed the council’s arbitrary approach felt “opportunistic” and “bullying”, especially because the council expected owners to pay their bills by August 31 to avoid late payment penalties.

The council said its job was to ensure everyone paid their fair share of rates and that it was following its official “rating policy”.

The council recently sent tens of thousands of Aucklanders their 2023-2024 rates bills.

The bill for an average household this year rises from $3306 to $3560 after Mayor Wayne Brown’s first budget led to a 7.7 per cent rate rise for homeowners.

The first instalments are due by August 31.

Apartments, like those owned by the Collises, Leoni and Wrigley, had been rated as commercial, the council said, because units in the complexes were being rented out as serviced apartments.

Rhonwen Heath, the council’s head of rates valuations, said when her team finds a complex with serviced apartments, they contact the manager.

“We proactively try to ensure the accuracy of our information by, each year, asking the managers of serviced apartments in Auckland if there are any properties that should be designated as residential, rather than commercial,” she said.

Any apartments the manager did not give information about were considered “unknown” and classified as commercial.

Heath said this was set out in council’s rating policy, which was open to public consultation during the recent Budget process.

Peter and Julie Collis are among apartment owners sent bills over-charging them for their rates. Photo / Alex Burton

Previously, the council left “unknown” apartments with residential classifications.

But post-Covid it changed its approach because it received complaints about units being used as serviced apartments but only paying residential rates, Heath said.

However, some owners the Herald spoke to said their complexes had more residential than serviced apartments, so it wasn’t fair to only call the managers of accommodation businesses for information.

The council should also contact resident associations, Leoni said.

“They have created stress for all of us ... and a massive overhead for themselves to fix this,” she said.

“If they just called the body corporates to get correct info, none of this would have happened.”

Owners wishing to change their ratings must now lodge formal objections with the council in writing.

However, the council has been sending automated email replies to objections, saying it could take up to 12 weeks to assess them.

In the meantime, the owners must pay the first instalment of their incorrect bills by August 31 or face a late payment penalty.

Leoni said handling objections afterwards rather than calling body corps before seemed time-consuming and a waste of ratepayer money.

Latitude 37 resident Wrigley feared owners may have to object every year.

“I find it frustrating that due to the current situation of Auckland Council designating Latitude 37 with a blanket classification as a hotel/serviced apartment that residents are going to be encumbered with having to object every year to their rates assessment,” he said.

The council could also stand to profit by keeping the money if owners did not know they were over paying, he said.

Heath said her team tries to keep its records accurate but invited apartment owners to contact the council at any time.

“This is a two-way conversation between the council and property owners or managers,” she said.

“We play our part by checking and reviewing the accuracy of our data on a frequent basis, but we note that the status of a property can change from year to year and it is important everyone is rated fairly and accurately.”

The council quickly changed the Collis’ rates bill back to residential after the Herald sent in a query last week, reducing the bill to roughly what they paid last year.